How To Build A Social Media Marketing Strategy In 2024
4.62 billion people around the world now use
social media that's over half the planet's population 424 million users have come online
within the last 12 months and the average daily time spent using social media is 2 hours and
27 minutes but the question is how do you or your business convert these users into paying
customers with the boom of social media and us becoming more and more addicted to quick fire
content is becoming harder and harder than ever to get attention of people online and almost
nine in ten companies in the united states are using social media for marketing purposes every
single day so you are competing with millions of businesses globally for the attention of social
media users and their hard-earned money luckily for you and sadly for me not even a fraction of
your competitors will get the chance to see this content this means less views for me but way
more value for you so let's get started here's how to build a social media marketing strategy
for your business big or small everything you need in one single video let's get into it the
first thing you really need to do is nail down who your target audience actually is and for
those of you thinking oh jordan i already know who my ideal customer is and where i can find them
then to you i say well done because understanding your ideal client avatar is imperative to
the success of any business so regardless of whether or not you think you understand your
customers inside out i want to run through exactly how you can get to know them better right now
so let's say your business sells boxing gear or boxing equipment where do you start first you
need to understand what content people that are into boxing actually consume we can do this and
start to do so by looking into our competitors and what they're posting and what their customers
are responding well to but your competitors aren't just people that are selling the exact same
products or services as you there are also other brands and websites and content creators that
are ranking for the top keywords in your industry let me show you something for a second let's jump
onto the map so what i would do is go over to every major search engine and i would search for
my product or service to get inspiration about what my ideal customer is actually searching for
what are they looking for so let's say uh boxing equipment okay and then we're gonna see all the
major keyword suggestions equipment uh that people are searching for in my industry if we put an
underscore little hack for you it's gonna come up with other suggestions based on where we put the
underscore so we could put how to boxing equipment okay so we've got how to store boxing equipment
we could create content around that and rank for this keyword how to clean boxing equipment how to
make good boxing equipment how to practice boxing about equipment right these are all content
ideas for us and we can get to understand what our ideal customer is actually searching for
so let's say we're looking at how to clean boxing equipment we've got a whole bunch of websites
and videos that we can take for inspiration we can go ahead and replicate this content we can
start a youtube channel putting out a bunch of a bunch of uh information about boxing equipment
how to store it how to clean it how to look after it how to use it and we can rank for those
keywords this is a principle that i adopt myself and that's why we use youtube as a lead generator
for our marketing agency the affluent agency if you type in facebook ads on google and you scroll
down and we used to be number one so shame on us for not being any more we've got our facebook ad
tutorial we created this video to generate inbound leads for our business so people come to us
when they need us to run their facebook ads okay it's an effective strategy now another thing that
you can use is you can use websites like answer the public which is a keyword search tool which
allows us to research different keywords so let's say we wanted to put boxing equipment in here okay
and we can search it it's gonna throw up all the relevant searches the most searched uh key terms
in our industry okay so boxing equipment we have where uh wheel who so who sells boxing equipment
what how when okay which where uh what boxing equipment how to use boxing equipment what
are boxing equipment how to use uh different types of boxing equipment and so on and so forth
okay if i scroll down this website recommend you playing around with this we don't have all the
time in the world to go through this right now there are so many other suggestions okay we've
got all of it by um by alphabetical order as well okay so you're never going to be short of places
to look for inspiration for content and strategy and understanding what your audience is actually
looking for but i've got something else i want to show you as well instagram is a great platform
to use when we are researching our audience and coming up with a new social media strategy in fact
let's go back over to this camera and let me share my screen right now okay so let's say we only sell
boxing equipment in the uk we want to get some uk based inspiration if we go to search we type
in boxing uk and we click on that hashtag right we can see all the content that's coming
up the most viewed content for boxing uk um and obviously we know this is going to be uk based
content so we can get inspiration we can have a look at what people are engaging with what people
are liking and we can replicate this content for our own page if it's relevant for us we can even
go on one of these pages okay so here we have a a world champion boxer okay amazing see what kind
of content she's putting out and what integration we can gain from there we can have a look at what
companies are actually tagging her in posts okay so we can see if we can find out anything about
those companies we just get into this vortex of our competitors and our customers and we
want to immerse ourselves in their world so we can stand in their shoes and we can understand
them better and we can best serve them better and we can gain inspiration from the people that are
actually doing well on social media let's say for example we wanted to look at uh boxing equipment
we could have a look search boxing equipment okay i'm getting the idea here guys we're gonna
have a look at what kind of content other people putting out angles to take vid pictures on angles
to take videos on how to edit videos what kind of um audio people are using and what people are
responding well to and those might sound a little bit overwhelming here but what i'm trying
to get at is there are many ways that you can gain inspiration about the kind of content you want to
put out there there are many ways that you can get inspiration about the strategy that you actually
want to execute and the first thing that i do when anybody speaks to me from any marketing agency
because i teach a lot of marketing agencies and they come to me and say jordan how do i get
results for this business as i say have you looked at the competitors have you looked at what
the guys that are already doing well are doing and are you trying to build out a strategy that
replicates their success and not just replicates everything that they're doing like have you
actually looked at the posts that are successful have you looked at the things that are actually
working for them because you don't just want to replicate all of their tests that have failed
because everybody's testing things so look at your competitors and your customers and get to
understand them inside out cool let's move on so the second thing we need to understand is what our
goals are what are we actually trying to achieve from our social media strategy do not go into this
blind and do not create goals like i want to get 10 000 followers on instagram because let me be
honest with you followers don't mean [ __ ] there are companies out there that have thousands and
thousands of followers that are never going to convert and actually buy their products and let's
be real the only thing that actually matters and the only thing that you should be investing
your time into as a business owner initially when you're trying to grow is getting more
customers and getting more sales so that should be our goal you might be a more established business
watching this right now we've already got customers and you might just want to increase
the lifetime value of those customers or build a community or just put out better content right
an actual goal make it clear so everything you are doing when it comes to building out this strategy
is around that one north star so set that goal and then tie it into time and make this realistic
okay you want to try and base it on something you have done before but if not just try and make your
best judgment maybe your goal is i want to get a thousand customers from social media for my
business this year okay a thousand new customers this year well that might even be six months
it might even be two months for some businesses it depends on what you have achieved before and
what stage your business is at the moment but try and make this goal measurable and something you
can actually commit to because we need to have the time in the day we need to consider how much
time in a day do i actually have to achieving this goal it's all well and good saying you know what
i want to get a thousand customers on social media but if you want to create a youtube channel and
you don't have time to allocate every single week to putting out new content it's gonna fall on
its face right we need to make sure that we are consistent and we can commit a certain amount
of time per week so set those goals link them to a time frame and commit to allocating your
personal time every single week to your social media strategy okay number three choose the right
platform so the first thing we need to think about is where you and your team are going to spend
their time let's say you've just committed to allocating an hour a day to your social media
strategy you don't want to be spreading yourself too thin and not actually getting any results
now there is no right or wrong answer to what platform is right for you but you need to base
this and make your best judgment based on your company and your product and your services but
also your strengths right if you are comfortable behind camera i would always advise in this day
and age going for a video first platform now you don't actually need to be comfortable it just
needs to be mentally okay with recording yourself now when i first started this youtube channel i
was hopeless genuinely it took me two hours to record a 10 minute video sometimes it still takes
a long time to record videos right but we get better over time we get more and more comfortable
in this environment video is the best way to sell products or services so if you feel comfortable
enough to record video i would advise you starting off on a platform like youtube or tick tock
or both if you're putting out youtube content you can allocate time to create micro pieces of
content on tick tock where the algorithm is still absolutely crazy believe me right now at the time
of recording this video you have not missed the bow the tick tock organic algorithm is like the
paid algorithm with facebook ads these days okay it's absolutely insane and so for any company that
has a product which is visual and you can explain it in different ways and you can engage with an
audience via video i would advise you to start off with tiktok and youtube as well but you need
to remain consistent on those kind of platforms don't commit to that if you're not actually going
to stick to it there's a reason why this youtube channel has built to the level itself and it's
nowhere near where i want to get it to yet right on that note if you're watching this the first
time you watch my videos then please make sure you subscribe okay make sure you turn your
notification bell on so you get notified every time we bring out these new videos but i
still consider us just getting started and at this stage at the time of recording this 200 000
subscribers the reason we have got to that point is because i've been consistent every single week
with releasing content for our subscribers guys i appreciate each and every one of you but you
need to do exactly the same so many people commit to video based platforms and they give up a couple
of weeks later right because they couldn't find the time and frankly that's just a poor excuse
but a lot of business owners fail because they fall into the trap of the fact that they
should be creating content on every single platform okay they try and spread themselves
across facebook instagram youtube snapchat okay all these different platforms and they never
actually succeed in any one of them okay because they're trying to learn all these things at once
also trying to manage their business and spin on these plates and it just doesn't work so what
i would advise you doing is following the 80 20 rule spend 80 percent of your time on one
base platform that you've chose okay youtube or tick tock for example and then spend 20 percent
of your time just showing up on other platforms you'll notice that's what i do okay eighty
percent of my time on social media is on youtube okay that's where eighty percent of my content
goes but i do occasionally post on ticket talk on instagram on facebook right but that's really
kind of sporadic i show up on those platforms but i spend the majority of my time on one thing
and because of that i've got a brand that's doing particularly well on one platform and i get a
lot of leads from that so i'd advise you doing the same pick one platform and put 80 of your
effort into that and then show up on the others you of course can maximize on everything in
the future you've got a big team you've got lots of resources but initially just focus
80 of your time on one thing now the fourth part of any successful social media strategy is
community building and i want you to think about building a community around your business your
products or your services so once we've figured out what platform we actually want to spend the
majority of our time on i want you to consider how you can build a community around that platform
a community of people that love your content and are thankful for the value that you put out for
them and that's the key word here value we want to be putting out valuable content surrounding
our product or service we want to become the known authority and expert within our industry and
yes this is work yes this goes outside the remit of 99 of our competitors out there that cannot be
asked to produce this kind of content but when we start creating valuable content that our customers
can benefit from and learn from and we can build a community around this content that is when we will
elevate ourselves above everybody else regardless of our products we will be seen as the authority
within our industry and we will have the respect of all of the customers within it now yes of
course we still want to put out promotional based content as well but if we do that through
our value-based content we can sell in a much more intelligent way if we can build the trust from our
customers that we know and we understand the need of our product itself then we'll be able
to sell it a lot easier okay so start thinking about those keywords that we were
looking at earlier and do this for yourself go over to google search for your product or
your service look at the things like how to and in your product look at what your consumers your
customers are actually looking for what content are they searching for and start building content
around that so you can take up the traffic from the keywords and you can educate the customers and
therefore build their trust so they want to buy your product or service value is key here it's
how i built this entire brand by over delivering my goal has always been to give more away for
free than my competitors will have you pay for and because of that my customers see the value i'm
putting out online and they think well if jordan's putting out this for free on youtube what on
earth must his pay products be like it's all about paying into the future when we build a community
around our products and our services we increase the lifetime value of each and every one of those
customers as well because we can re-market to them much easier now on the note of marketing point
five i want to talk about is paid advertising now i own an advertising agency called affluent.com
we're a multi-platform agency based in the uk and we're responsible for generating millions and
millions in new revenue for e-commerce companies all over the globe so i understand the importance
of paid advertising when it comes to a business's strategy okay both their inbound strategy and
their outbound strategy what we're talking about today is the organic side of your business okay
the organic side of your social media strategy but paid advertising is what blows all of that
up paid advertising is what gives you access to millions and millions of new customers that
have never seen you before it enables us to push ourselves right into the hands of our ideal
customer or in a world addicted to these things our mobile phones where we just scroll around and
just look around us okay people just scrolling through their feeds mindlessly right well if
we can put ourselves in front of those people on their feed by paying a little bit of money
and what better way to advertise our products or services so i would recommend you looking into
paid advertising on major platforms like facebook like instagram like tik tok like youtube and maybe
even snapchat as well these are all the platforms that we advertise on at our marketing agency the
affluent agency by the way if you're listening to this and you're thinking man like i don't want
to have to learn all of that stuff myself then click link in the description and apply to work
with our agency but regardless of whether you do it yourself or you pay an agency to do it you
need to be advertising right now in 2022 it's a non-negotiable if not your competitors are going
to take over and you're just going to get squashed okay so you might as well give up now paid
advertising isn't just the top of funnel for new customers but it bolsters up our organic strategy
we can re-target all of our website traffic and the people that have viewed our organic pages and
therefore squeeze more money out of every single person that is already aware of our product or
service so that's paid ads point six is automation now i get it you're a business owner and you don't
wanna be spending all of your time implementing this stuff yourself now whilst i think it's
important that every business owner understands the inner mechanics of their social media strategy
okay they understand everything that's going on i think it's important that you don't do
absolutely all of the work so in the early stages it's very easy to outsource some time-consuming
tasks we can outsource scheduling content we can outsource content writing okay we can outsource
video editing okay these are the things that we can outsource for pretty cheap that are actually
going to save us monumental amounts of time now if you're unsure on where you can find professionals
freelancers to actually do this for you you can look on websites like freelancer upwork.com or
even you can just hire in-house team members from local job sites but it's important that we're
not spending all of our personal time on these time-consuming things like scheduling and content
writing and video editing right our time needs to be spent on actually producing the strategy on
creating the content on recording it ourselves right our time doesn't want to be spent on editing
and all these mundane things that other people can do for us very easily and for a very cheap
cost it's going to make you more efficient straight away if you just make sure you cut that
out from the get go okay now the final thing i want to go through today number seven is data and
i don't really think a lot of businesses out there who implement a social media strategy fully
understand their data or are conscious of their data so many people out there will say oh do you
know what i'm going to implement this new tick tock strategy or i'm going to start creating
youtube videos delivering value and they fail to actually look at the results of what they have
done they just base things based on the top level results okay what how many sales have i got in
how much web traffic have i actually generated but not actually looked at the micro data not
actually looked at how that content improved their click-through rate or how their engagement rate
increased or the quality of customer that reacted to specific pieces of content that they've put
out there now i recently hired within the last 12 months a full-time youtube content manager
now that content manager dan not only manages our whole youtube strategy but every single
week he is looking at the micro data and we are making tweaks to our thumbnails to the way
we end video so the way we start videos so the competitions we launch all of these micro tests
that have macro impact and it's very important that you have somebody in your team as your
strategy develops to actually look at that data so you can test out the little things and you
can actually maximize on your strategy because at the end of the day even if you're following the
exact strategy of one of your top competitors that doesn't mean that same strategy is going
to work for you so you need to understand the ins and outs of your personal data based on
the things that you are testing out on your social media strategy so you can aim to improve one
percent every single day cool that's it the end